Earlier this year, President Obama expressed his excitement over the fact that seven million people had signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a program aimed at reforming health insurance. Obama signed the law into effect in March 2010, but the controversy surrounding the healthcare reform law has never died down.  In a recent NPR article, “Lessons Learned for 2015 from this Year’s Obamacare Sign-Ups,” Julie Rovner assesses the positives as well as the negatives surrounding Obamacare, and what can be done to improve the Affordable Care Act in 2015.

Although the program may be seen as beneficial when it comes to health plans, that is not to say it isn’t flawed. For instance, those who are not experienced with insurance policy terminology (which is a large amount of people), will more than likely sign up for a health plan that costs them more money than they should have paid, because it can be difficult to understand.

In fact, Families USA has taken several strides to help suggest numerous ways the Affordable Care Act can be improved to be more easily understood by people, such as:

  • Investing more money in one-on-one training with knowledgeable navigators to help people sign up for certain health plans.
  • Providing more resources for financial support due to the high costs of monthly premiums.
  • Implementing an enrollment period that coincides with the typical time that people file their taxes, which will help alleviate the amount of people who will receive penalties in both 2014 and 2015 for not having insurance, and because they missed the deadline to sign up. To make the situation even easier, several people have also been advocates for having the original enrollment period take place around the time that people file their taxes (which would then diminish the need for there to even be a special enrollment period).

Luckily, an online tool that is now available, which was produced by Robert Krughoff, the founder of Consumer’s Checkbook, allows “people [to] estimate their health costs” through the use of questions related to consumer’s health status, income, and family and financial trends. Although the tool is said to currently only be available in Illinois, if it continues to demonstrate its ability to save people time and money when signing up for health plans, and acquires enough funding, it is sure to become more widespread.

Another positive to be taken from these suggestions is that they do not “require legislation from Congress,” meaning it will probably be easier for the proposals to be implemented.

The Affordable Care Act was created with the intentions of improving the quality of care, lowering healthcare costs, providing greater access to healthcare and protecting consumers. We’ll have to see what the next year brings, but so far the reviews of Obama’s Affordable Care Act are highly mixed.

What do you think of the Affordable Care Act? How do you think it can be improved in the years to come? Leave a comment and let us know!

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